This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

 

TITLE: Surviving Life
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: An angsty older woman, with money woes, fakes being timid to attract a rich fiance who insists she toughen up by completing a survival cruise with his maladjusted sister.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Surviving Life is a lowbrow comedy, with heart. There’s no poop or fart jokes but crudeness and profanity abound. It’s a female buddy movie with older protagonists. Some might find my main character, Helen, to be unsympathetic, but I wanted her to be her own worse enemy because the story is about making bad choices. The characters are older because I tried to explore how fear can shrink our lives as we age. I’m submitting to AF in the hopes of finding out what works and what doesn’t. Thanks ahead of time for any feedback.

TITLE: Vegas Trio
GENRE: Dark Comedy
LOGLINE: Three master pick up artists find themselves in way over their heads after they become criminals in order to keep up with their drug and sex fueled Vegas lifestyle.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I won’t waste your time describing how good I THINK this script is. You’ll decide that for yourself. You should read this script because it will give me exposure. I can’t get anywhere as a screenwriter if I’m not exposed on sites like Scriptshadow. I mean, I’m in the middle of Arkansas with a wife and baby. I’m not going to sell a spec in this ultra competitive industry unless websites like yours know I exist. So I need your help. I’m out of money, out of patience, and out of options. If this screenwriting thing is EVER going to happen for me, it needs to happen within the next year. It would be an honor if Scriptshadow got the ball rolling on my career.

TITLE: The Fireseed
GENRE: True Crime Drama
LOGLINE: Based on real events, The Fireseed tells of a deeply closeted governor on the brink of re-election who must stop a network of twelve serial killers before they expose him and kill his nephew.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ: The events on which The Fireseed is based have never been brought to the screen. Between 1974 and 1983 a network of serial killers known as The Family were thought responsible for 300 abductions and five murders in my hometown of Adelaide, Australia.

TITLE: The Devil’s Teardrop
GENRE: Crime thriller
LOGLINE: A master thief must confront betrayal in his crew and overcome a brutal gangster as he steals four of the world’s most valuable diamonds in order to get his hands on his ultimate quarry: the 1,000-year old red diamond known as the Devil’s Teardrop.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I lived in Saudi Arabia for a year and Colombia for three. (More broadly, I’ve spent a lot of time overseas, and that matters for the script because it features a number of overseas locations.)

TITLE: Canary in a Coal Mine.pdf)
GENRE: Animated comedy with dark overtones
LOGLINE: When a young canary discovers the true purpose of canaries in a 1930s coal mine, he teams with a boy miner to improve working conditions for birds and boys alike.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Canary in a Coal Mine is a Nicholl Fellowship semi-finalist and Austin Film Fest Second Rounder. It was discussed on John August’s ScriptNotes podcast as part of their 3-Page Challenge, and it’s garnered attention from Disney and Sony Animation. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice.

As for me, I’m a persistent writer who has submitted to ScriptShadow 8 or 9 times, but this is the first in 2014. I love the website and the scripts. However, I’ve noticed one thing missing — CANARY MINERS. You need canary miners wearing tiny helmet lamps and speaking Scranton lingo to be complete. Trust me.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: (from writer) The true story of Bobby Riggs, The Battle of the Sexes, and how the mafia may have influenced the most famous tennis match in history.
Why You Should Read: (from writer) Rigged combines something you love (tennis) with something you hate (biopics). Like chocolate covered raisins. It’s also tailor-made for an A-list actor (Paul Giamatti?), has clear GSU and features some of the most intense tennis scenes this side of Bridesmaids. Is this the first amateur biopic to get a “Worth the Read” by Carson?”
Writer: Andrew Parker
Details: 94 pages

As I was a tennis nerd in another lifetime, I’m very familiar with this match. It’s one of the most important events in sports history. It showed that the girls could hang with the guys. Well, sort of. I mean, throwing an aging out-of-shape weirdo (as Riggs was) to compete against one of the best women in the world in her prime wasn’t exactly the best way to prove anything. But when King won, it really helped people take women more seriously in the sport and gave Women’s Rights a healthy push as well. Now, women’s tennis is the most lucrative female sport in the world. In all the major tennis championships, women and men get paid the same amount of prize money. There is no other sport that does that.

Now if you’re looking for a heavy facts-driven honest interpretation of the “Battle of the Sexes” spectacle, writer Andrew Parker would probably suggest you look somewhere else. “Riggs” is light and fluffy most of the way through, which is both an advantage and a fault.

It’s 1971 and Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon champion now in his 50s, is bored with life. He works for some big boring company. His boss is his step-father. In order to get through the days, he comes up with inventive games and calls his bookie to put money on all the major sporting events. Yup, Riggs is both a lazy bum and a gambler. A winning combination!

At some point, Riggs realizes “real work” isn’t his thing and decides to head west to have fun with his life again. So he leaves his wife and son to… well, hustle people I guess. Riggs isn’t the kind of guy who’s always got a plan. That is until he watches a women’s tennis match on TV and realizes that he could probably beat the socks off of them. And people would probably pay to see him do so.

So Riggs puts on his promoter shoes and starts telling any TV network that will have him that women suck. They need to stay in the kitchen and work on being pregnant. And that any man, even an aging old grandpa like himself, could beat them on a tennis court. He backs up his talk when he beats the number 1 female player in the world, Margaret Court (One of the best tennis names ever). And then he challenges Billie Jean King. Fearing that if she loses it will set women’s rights back 20 years, King is reluctant at first, but finally comes around.

In the meantime, Riggs’s betting is getting out of control, and some shady mafia buddies are on his case for the 100 grand he owes them. This forces Riggs to go out and promote the hell out of the match in order to get as many people to watch it as possible (it is reported that over 90 million people eventually watched the match), so he can get them their money.

But in a twist, his mafia buddies tell him at the last second that they want him to throw the match. They figure they can make a hell of a lot more than the money Riggs owes them that way. Riggs starts to buckle under all the pressure and goes into a tailspin, drinking and partying. By the time the match arrives, he’s not in shape, and ends up getting embarrassed in straight sets by King. He wanted a re-match, but King wouldn’t give him one. The two remained friends until Riggs’s death in 1995.

Ahhh! I long for the days when tennis was relevant, when the sport actually took chances and put together stuff like this to drum up interest. Now we got bore-snores like Azarenka and Novak Djokovic. Also, all the players like each other. They’re all best buds. They hug and hang out after the match. I wouldn’t be surprised if they showered together and scrubbed each other’s backs. Back in the old days, with McEnroe and Conners, after a match you threw your racket at your opponent’s face! It was fun to watch people play because people didn’t like each other dammit!

Where were we? Oh yeah! This script. So I thought Rigged was pretty good. The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t read AT ALL like a biopic. You know how I am when I see that word. “Biopic.” It’s the equivalent of a deadly thirsty man hearing the words “desert.” I just see insurmountable blocks of text and thousands of overly dramatic scenes about daddy didn’t hug me enough. Double fault on that.

This script is really clean. The writing is so sparse you find yourself 20 pages in within minutes. And for the most part, that approach worked. I love how Parker made Riggs funny. He’s a hustler. He’s a bit of a slimeball. And he doesn’t take life too seriously. So when he’s fucking around with his co-worker or trading barbs with his older bro, I was usually smiling.

But this was also the script’s biggest problem. When we did want there to be meat, it wasn’t there. And big moments were relegated to half-page snapshots. For example, Riggs just decides to leave his family to go hang out on the West Coast. He tells his wife and is out of his family’s life within five lines. WTF????

I’m thinking there’d probably be a little more build-up, conflict and thought involved before making that decision, particularly because he’s not just leaving his wife. He’s leaving his son! Speaking of, the son here is just a-okay with everything! Dad can’t hang out but wants to drink with his friends instead, no problem! Dad wants to leave him and his mom for years, no problem! I mean this kid was the most well-adjusted cool-with-anything kid I’d ever met! We clearly needed to dig into that more. I usually see these types of problems with sub-100 page scripts. There’s not enough fleshing out. “Rigged” was no exception.

The other major problem is that Rigged looks at the less interesting side of this battle. I mean, Riggs has so little at stake compared to King. King was playing for half the world. Riggs was playing to pay back his bookie. There was something so empty about that. And I’m not saying Parker should spin around and cover King instead, because that would make this a much more serious script and I liked how Rigged was sort of a light-hearted comedy. But if you are going to focus on Riggs, we need a better reason why winning this match is so important to him. He doesn’t have to figure it out right away. But he needs to figure it out at some point so that when he steps on that court, we care about him.

Then also, this ending makes Billie Jean King look TERRIBLE. I mean this basically says, “The only reason Riggs lost this match was because he tanked for his bookies.” I know there’s that moment in the match where Riggs decides, “No, I’m going to try to win,” but it was practically a throwaway moment. There was no conviction to it. So we didn’t believe it.

You also point out that Riggs was really out of shape and hadn’t practiced at all. Again, this takes everything away from King’s win. And you have to understand that the people who are going to see this movie are the people who love the fact that King won this match and changed the world. To finish with a finale that basically says, “Riggs gave her the match,” isn’t going to go over well. This needs to be rewritten SOMEHOW to emphasize that Riggs gave this his all and tried 100%. I don’t know if that means getting rid of the bookies or what. But it needs that ending.

And maybe you can kill two birds with one stone here. Riggs was known as an ultra-competitive guy who hated to lose. I’d love to see more of that infused into his character. Make it this guy’s fatal flaw, his Achilles heal. Not only will you get some of that depth I’m asking for, but then you can really highlight this in the final match, and emphasize how this guy is giving it his all.

I’m going to give this script a BARELY worth the read because I think it has a lot of upside and I like Parker as a writer. I just want him to infuse a little more meat into his work. It needs that meat if we’re going to care during the final match.

Script Link: Rigged

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you’re conceiving a concept, look at every angle of the concept to make sure you’re exploring the most interesting one. For example, you might have your mind set on a movie about a cop who’s hunting down a drug dealer who’s wreaking havoc on the town. But maybe telling the story from the drug dealer’s point of view, making him an underdog who’s trying to provide for his family, might make the better story.

So tonight American Idol had its season premiere (go J. Lo!) and I have a pretty good idea of what your response to that is. Who the f— cares! That show had its heyday a decade ago. It doesn’t have any influence in the music industry anymore. There’s 10 million other singing shows competing against it, depleting the talent pool and dimming the luster of anyone who wins the competition. Who gives a crap, right?

I’ll tell you who gives a crap. ME. Now you’re probably wondering why someone obsessed with screenwriting would give a rat’s melody about a reality show highlighting a bunch of caterwauling Katy Perry wannabes. Well, it’s the same thing that drew me to screenwriting in the first place. The idea of going from a nobody to a somebody. Just like how if you sing something amazing in front of the world, you become an instant superstar, if you write a great screenplay and the right person reads it, you can sell it for a million bucks. It’s one of the coolest things about this business.

Ah, but that’s not the real reason I’m obsessed with American Idol. No no no. I’m obsessed with it for a much darker reason. I watch it because the auditions so closely resemble the amateur audition process in screenwriting. Every time someone comes up to sing, it’s the same as when a script lands in an executive’s lap. This is their chance. This is their shot to prove to the world they’ve got it.

The big difference is that when you sing, it’s all out there for everyone to hear. Within seconds you know if the person’s good or not. With writing, the process is a little more complicated. It takes a few pages to figure out if the person’s got it. And if they don’t, the writer doesn’t get that direct feedback a singer does. They’re left in the cold, forced to interpret things through a quick e-mail or no reply at all. It’s one of the reasons writing is so tough. It’s difficult to get any quality feedback on your work.

But the thing that gets me so infatuated with Idol, is that the process for determining who’s got it in singing and who’s got it in writing is the same. It all comes down to the voice! Think about any singer you’ve fallen in love with. Think about your favorite singer right now. What first drew you to them? It was something different and unique about their voice, right? Maybe it’s the tone. Maybe it’s the pitch. Maybe it’s the way they emphasize certain phrases or play with certain chords. But mostly it’s something in their voice you hadn’t heard from any other artist before. From Eminem to Louis Armstrong to Adele to Lorde. You would never mix them up with any other artist, right?

And that’s the key phrase: “SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T HEARD BEFORE.”

I would love it every aspiring screenwriter would equate their writing to singing and ask themselves that question: “What is it about my voice that’s different?” What can I do with my voice that’s unlike any other voice out there? Because here’s the thing I see on American Idol. There are a TON of singers that are “good.” They’ve trained most of their lives. They’ve taken lessons. They’ve practiced their asses off. So when they sing, you nod your head and you say, “That was pretty good.”

But “that was pretty good” is the kiss of death. Nobody pays for “that was pretty good.” Nobody goes to a concert for “that was pretty good.” Nobody’s going to tell their friends about “That was pretty good.” You know it when you see these guys on American Idol. They’re forgettable. They’re aping artists we’re already heard and because they’ll never be as good as those artists, why would anyone want to hear them?

Aspiring screenwriters don’t seem to realize this for some reason. That they’re no different from these singers. They’ve done the training. They’ve read the books. They’ve written a bunch of screenplays. And still they’re getting no traction and they don’t know why. The reason is because they’re the writing equivalent of these guys going up for that audition in front of J. Lo, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr., that are “pretty good.”

Being the screenwriting-obsessed megalomaniac that I am, whenever I see these singers on Idol, year after year, I ask myself, “What can a writer do to make sure he isn’t the equivalent of that guy?” And the answer is: you gotta sound like the dudes/gals who are unique! You gotta establish your own voice! Just like that unique tone you hear in your favorite artist, you have to find that tone in yourself, that unique combination of prose, humor, subject matter, theme, dialogue, rhythm that makes your scripts sound like nobody else’s out there.

In order to make this analogy work, you kind of have to imagine walking in front of three judges and having them read your script out loud, then judging you. Would they read through the first five pages and think, “You know what? I’ve never heard something quite like this before?” Or would they say, “You know what? I’ve seen over a hundred movies with this exact same scene in them?” “I’ve read a hundred writers that write just like this?” Yesterday is a perfect example. Wes Anderson’s script, “My Best Friend.” If I read that out loud, myself and two other judges would remember it. It’s different. What’s different about you!?

You can apply this across all competitions. If you were a chef, what kind of dish would you make that’s unlike any other dish out there? You could make something as simple as mashed potatoes. But if you added a certain spice or a hint of some fruit or vegetable, that dish could go from ordinary to unforgettable. And that’s what you have with a screenplay. You literally have millions of ingredients to play with. So you don’t have an excuse for not trying to be different in some way.

Or, to make a more relevant comparison, think about your favorite directors. Go look at this trailer for Divergent. Quite possibly the most generic execution of a sci-fi film ever, right? Now look at this one. How much more memorable is that? If you were an executive and these two clips popped up in your e-mail, which director would you call back? It’s all about voice. It’s about somebody putting their unique interpretation on the direction of the film. That’s what you’re trying to do with a script – offer your own unique interpretation.

Maybe the best example of voice is this short movie I saw the other day. I will guarantee, 100%, that after you watch this movie, you will never ever forget it. Ever. Go ahead, watch it and tell me differently.

Unforgettable right? A unique voice, right? That’s what you want to do. You want to make it impossible for people to forget about you.

Okay, so to reiterate, what is it, not just in your current screenplay, but in ALL of your work, that makes you different? That makes your screenplays read differently than everything else out there? And I’m not saying it has to be like that short – 100% balls to the wall weird. It can be subtle. But it has to be SOMETHING.  Or else you’re one of the thousands of people who get up on that stage in front of those judges for their big moment, and give a technically fine but ultimately forgettable performance.  Identify that thing that’s unique in you (you might need to ask someone who knows you well to do this) and find a way to infuse that into your scripts.  Remember, the worst thing you can be in art is forgettable. So please don’t let that be you.

Genre: Wes Anderson
Premise: Adapted from a French film, “My Best Friend” is about an unlikable middle-aged art dealer who’s come to the realization that he has no friends, and so goes about trying to find one.
About: Wes Anderson wrote this script for Imagine Entertainment over at Universal. It’s one of the few scripts (it may even be the only script) Anderson’s written without the intent to direct. However, in subsequent interviews, he’s professed how much he loved writing it, leaving a tiny door open that maybe one day he’ll direct it. As for why it hasn’t been made into a film yet, it may be that they’re banking on that slim chance. But my money’s on the fact that it was written in 2009, and in 2010, the French-adapted comedy Dinner For Schmucks bombed big time, pretty much putting the kibosh on any French comedy imports. The trend seems to have shifted towards the “lots of lesbian sex” import genre. So if they can bring someone in to change the characters into female nymphomaniacs, they may have something on their hands! Anderson’s newest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, comes out next month. But if you’re jonzeing for some immediate Wes, check out the trailer for his new horror film!
Writer: Wes Anderson (based on the French Film written by Patrice Leconte)
Details: 95 pages, First Draft (Aug 3, 2009)

Fiennes would be the perfect lead in this Anderson movie as well!

So I was going through my script pile last night and I came across this old forgotten Wes Anderson script. It occurred to me, as I picked it up (“digitally” picked it up mind you) that I’d never actually read a Wes Anderson script. Or if I had, I didn’t remember doing so. I found this reality to be problematic, since Anderson is such a force on the Indie film scene. But what could I possibly learn from some reject Wes Anderson script anyway? If it’s this forgotten, it couldn’t be any good, could it? Let’s find out!

Nicholas is an art dealer with zero honor. He is oblivious to the way he fucks people over, which is fine when you’re 25 and have time to mature and change your selfish ways. But Nicholas is 46, and a life of fucking people over has led to a lonely existence, an existence he hasn’t become aware of until recently.

Currently, Nicholas is buying up all the paintings in town from a particular artist, Moses Rosenthaler, who he has it on good authority is going to die soon. After he dies, Nicholas will host a showing of all the Rosenthalers and make a killing. Yup, like I said, this isn’t the kind of guy you want to bring home to your parents.

Nicholas is also a bit of a scammer (surprise surprise) and doesn’t have any money. This forces him to team up with a fellow art dealer, Lucinda, an older woman he doesn’t like but who has money. He lets her in on his Rosenthaler secret and she agrees to put up half the loot.

That night, Nicholas invites Lucinda to his birthday party. She comes and is amused to find that nobody’s actually shown up. She points out the obvious to Nicholas, that he has no friends, which he vehemently denies. They get in an argument, and Lucinda makes a bet that if he can prove he has a friend within a week, she’ll give him all the Rosenthalers for himself. If he loses, she gets all of them. He agrees.

Nicholas enlists taxi driver and aspiring artist, Zbigniew, to drive him around town to find one of these friends. In every way Nicholas is socially moronic, Zbigniew is a social superstar. He can charm an entire room with an anecdote or joke, whereas whenever Nicholas speaks, people get scared and run away. Upon seeing Zbigniew’s talents, Nicholas hires him to teach him “how to make friends.”

It’s a ridiculous request and Zbigniew tries to say no, but Nicholas is so darn insistent that Zbigniew has no choice. Nicholas looks for friends first on his payroll, from his lawyer to his psychiatrist, but comes back empty-handed. He even goes back to someone from 6th grade who he thought was his best friend, only to find out that he’s actually his mortal enemy (because Nicholas doesn’t even understand the basic definition of  the word “friend,” he doesn’t realize that terrorizing someone over the course of their childhood would actually make that person hate him).

Eventually, of course, Nicholas begins to realize that he’s enjoying his time with Zbigniew, and that he may be the friend he’s been looking for. Unfortunately, as soon as Nicholas realizes he can use Zbigniew to win the bet, he screws it all up, potentially losing everything in the process.

Wes Anderson

One thing I’ve found with these French comedies is that they often operate under 1980s American Comedy rules, where the setup doesn’t have to be logical. You get silly stuff like Brewster’s Millions. That’s the biggest hurdle “My Best Friend” faces. Nicholas and Janice make this bet that he can’t find a friend, yet never define exactly what that means. Is a “friend” someone he hangs out with every Saturday night? Someone who calls him back within a day of his voice mail? The script never defines this, and it’s a huge problem.

The flimsy setup also begs questions like, why can’t Nicholas just pay some random dude 5 grand to pretend he’s his friend? And I hate that. I hate when the rules of the story aren’t defined, because then there’s too much wiggle room for the writer to bullshit. And that’s exactly what you saw here. Once Nicholas tells Lucinda that Zbigniew’s the friend, she starts rambling off all this stuff about how he has to prove it. (“Um, then he must steal something for you!”) Okay, so the final act is Zbigniew having to steal something to prove that Nicholas is his friend?? What???

There’s an old saying in screenwriting. If there are problems in the third act, it’s because of problems in your first act. This is the prototypical example of that. We have a weird misconceived “Zbigniew tries to steal a painting” climax because the rules of what “a friend” are are never stated. This forces the characters (and by extension the writer) to make those rules up in the last act, which feels lazy and results in a sloppy finale.

But here’s why I still liked this script. The characters were great. And I think Wes Anderson gets shortchanged on characters because everything takes a backseat to his unique production design and quirky sense of humor. But he’s so damn good at creating comedic characters. Nicholas, as this clueless asshole, never fails to amuse, because he’s so damn dull when it comes to understanding friendship. Zbigniew needs to teach him how to actually talk to people. Just talk! And Nicholas still figures out a way to screw it up.

What I found clever about this was that we have one of these potential script-killing problems in “My Best Friend” (the main character is a total asshole), yet Anderson brilliantly offsets it by pairing him up with the most likable person on the planet – Zbigniew. He’s kind, earnest, passionate, active. The guy loves art but he can’t create it for the life of him. Yet he still tries.  How could you not root for that guy?

And I think what this script does that a lot of good scripts do, is you’re so into the characters, you don’t really think about the plot. You’re just in the moment with these two people. Laughing and enjoying their company. So even though the plot here is flawed, it doesn’t matter as much because you just want to see these two guys “get together” at the end.

And you know, that’s kind of the genius of this story. It’s essentially a romantic comedy. It takes your typical rom-com premise (guy and girl team up to find a guy the love of his life, but the two end up falling in love with each other in the process!) and hides it within a bro-mance. Brilliant!

I don’t know if they can ever make this without Wes Anderson directing. It has his fingerprints all over it. Trying to get someone else to interpret it is going to send the film into “Community Season 4” territory (when creator Dan Harmon left) – a badly plagiarized imitation. The thing is, I believe this would be one of Wes Anderson’s best movies if he made it. It’s a little more mainstream than his typical fare, yet still has that unmistakable quirky bent his films are known for. If I were him, I’d consider it. It’s a really good script. (The script is out in the ether. People have it. So if you want to read it, ask around in the comments).

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you’re having trouble with your third act, go back to your first act and make sure you’ve clearly set up your protagonist’s goal, as well as the rules for achieving that goal. If you know that Indiana is going after the Ark, you probably know your climax is going to involve him and the Ark. But if you’re vague about it (i.e. Indiana is going after miscellaneous “treasure”) figuring out your final act is going to be a lot tougher. Here, we never defined the rules behind what “friendship” means, so the ending was sloppy in defining how the bet was won.

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: After a small plane crashes, three survivors start to experience weird sensations along with heightened awareness. When the government comes in to investigate what happened, the survivors get the feeling that there’s more to their crash than they’ve been told.
About: This is one of the new pilots (no pun intended) over at AMC. It was written by Blake Masters, who created the show “Brotherhood” on Showtime, about the Irish mob. Masters was actually one of those blessed/cursed writers who spent a long time in Hollywood selling scripts and TV projects, yet getting none of them made. “Brotherhood” started out as a movie before his agents asked if he could turn it into a TV show. He did, and Showtime loved it so much they snatched it up immediately. His career has since taken off (he also wrote last year’s “2 Guns” starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg) and is only getting better. If that doesn’t get you excited, Jonathan Demme, who directed Silence of the Lambs, is directing the pilot episode!
Writer: Blake Masters
Details: 62 pages – 3/15/13 draft

David Morrissey, who played The Governor on “The Walking Dead” will play the series lead, Lewis.

Uhh, if you’re writing about plane crashes and science fiction, COUNT ME IN! Why am I 30% convinced every time I step on a plane that it’s going to go down? Besides of the fact that it’s a TUBE OF STEEL and that TUBES OF STEEL shouldn’t be able to fly! There are too many physics variables working against it. Too many things that have to go right in Newton’s Laws of gravity.  Seriously, airplanes can’t even land in the right airport anymore!  How are they supposed to stay in the sky?

For that reason, I LOVE reading scripts ABOUT plane crashes because – and yes, I’m aware of how warped this sounds – I enjoy watching others suffer in a plane crash. Because it gives me joy that I’m not one of those people. That in some strange way, despite it being fiction, I survived!

Now when you combine these plane crashes with sci-fi, I mean, come on. You’re talking about a mix of ingredients so powerful that they can do no wrong. Do I need to mention a certain couple of star-crossed lovers? Two island-soaked friends torn by their inability to give to one another but who were secretly and always in love except that that PESKY SAWYER had to keep messing it all up by being so darn charming and rogueish? Yes, I’m talking about Jack and Kate! I’m talking about Lost. Plane Crash + Sci-Fi = greatest show ever. Every time. Always. That equation ALWAYS works. Except for The Event. And Fringe. Otherwise, history proves that this combination is failsafe.

Line of Sight follows Lewis Bernt, who’s all bernt out when he realizes his wife’s been cheating on him – doing the whole sleazy hotel meet up thing to really hammer home the sliminess. But Lewis, a NTSB plane accident investigator, is going on a hunting trip with his friends this weekend and the last thing he wants is to get in some big fight with his wife before he leaves.

Oh, but get this. Juicy gossip warning. The guy she’s cheating on him with? His friend Walker? He’s PILOTING the plane that’s taking them on the hunting trip! Scandalous right? Yeah, them and four other friends are taking a small plane out into the wilderness. And when Lewis arrives, he lets Walker know that he now knows the secret.

Along for the ride are Lewis’s good friends Tony, unambitious to a fault, David, a “cerebral goofball,” and two other hunting dude types. Well, the plane gets ready to leave but before it does we cut to black, and the next thing Lewis knows, he’s woken up in a plane crash. He’s alive, as are Dave and Tony, but everyone else is dead. Except for Walker, who’s missing. Nobody remembers what happened.  Especially the dead guys.

A rescue team helicopters in to, literally, pick them up, and as Lewis is being pulled up, he sees the wreckage. It’s all wrong. It’s presented as a horizontal crash, but there are no skid marks consistent with a horizontal crash. This simply can’t be. It’s impossible. But before he can take anything else in, he’s flown to the hospital.

While in his hospital bed, Lewis starts seeing a lot of suspicious people milling about. Mostly government types. Lewis’s job is crash inspection, and he knows that these people shouldn’t be here. When they do get around to him for questioning, it’s clear that they’re intrigued by he and Walker’s issues, and that that may be where they’re starting their investigation.

Oh, but that’s not even close to the real issue. The real issue is that the three survivors start experiencing messed up shit. Tony just stares off into nothingness for hours at a time. Dave has become a super-genius with the ability to do “how do you like them apples” type math equations. And Lewis is feeling all this heightened shit happening around him. He can hear things in the wind, see patterns in mundane things. Life’s gettin’ all trippy for these three.

Eventually, Lewis starts looking into his crash, and finds odd facts associated with it, like that there are 4 times as many plane crashes on the date of his crash than any other day. And that there’s a pattern in the frequencies of those crashes. The reality is, these three survivors are changing. Into what? It’s not clear. Nor is it clear why the government is so intrigued by the accident. I suppose the real question is, what is the government keeping from Lewis about the crash? What are they keeping from all of them?

Writer Blake Masters

Here we have a show clearly inspired by the likes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the plane crash film, Fearless. Which I say as a compliment. You have three men, divinely affected by this experience, who are trying to find meaning after it happens. I think that’s a good setup for a TV show. So does it work?

For awhile.

I loved the setup here. I loved the spooky mystery behind Lewis waking up in a crashed plane with three days of his life vanished. I love that we don’t know what happened that caused the crash, whether it was supernatural or logical (did he get in a fight with Walker and that caused the plane to go down?). I was really into all the questions for about 30 pages.

But I’m going to be honest, as we entered that second half, I began to get frustrated. Tons of things were happening, questions were being brought up, seemingly by the second, and nothing was being answered. I know people say Lost did this every episode, but Lost was more deliberate about each question. The questions in Line of Sight seemed to be thrown out at us willy-nilly, almost off-the cuff.

Dave leaves a screwdriver at the table while screwing something. It continues to stand up. Lewis stares at and obsesses over strawberries for no reason. We have crazy dudes going on and on about “frequencies.” They then get hit by a car. Everyone hears music in the wind. A crossword that was completed with letters mysteriously turns to all numbers. People are able to walk across highways without looking or stopping and not get hit. People get stopped for doing 135 miles per hour and the officer lets them go for no reason. Everyone has itchy hands. People are writing down random equations on paper. People are building machines worth half a billion dollars. The FBI and other government agencies are watching our survivors.

It just felt like TOO MUCH. I think laying out mysteries is great. But if you start throwing one down every other page, sooner or later you’ve spread yourself too thin and we’ve lost interest. How is Mystery 13 compelling if I know in 5 pages it will be usurped by Mystery 19? I think this script just needed to SLOW DOWN. If you try to cram too much crazy shit into your story, it starts to feel desperate, like the kid with the skateboard doing trick after trick in front of the new girl at school saying “Look at this! Look at this!” Desperation is never attractive.

With that said, there were some good things to talk about here. I loved that we started right away with a problem, and not necessarily the kind of problem you’d associate with this kind of show. I believe writers feel pressure to go big with their teaser, especially if they’re writing in the supernatural or sci-fi genre. But sometimes the best open is just to create a good old-fashioned (but intriguing) character problem.

In “Line of Sight,” we start with Lewis going to grab his wife’s phone out of her purse and finding a hotel card instead, a hotel card that clearly implies she’s been cheating on him. Lewis doesn’t confront his wife right away (why do that? You’d destroy all the suspense!) and instead gets ready for his hunting trip. When he gets on the plane, he heads up front where his friend Walker is, and promptly tells him that he knows he’s fucking his wife. End of teaser!

Not a single sci-fi element to be found, and yet you can bet your ass we’re staying around until after the commercial. So never underestimate using the HUMAN COMPONENT with your opening. You can create something just as intriguing by exploring two people as you can exploring a bank heist or a plane crash or a car chase.

I also loved some of Masters’ descriptions. He’d come out with one every few pages that I’d never seen before that perfectly encapsulated that character. For example, here’s a character named Edgar’s entrance: “Jensen spots a THICK SET MAN (let’s call him EDGAR) standing beside a town car. His tie flaps in the wind but the rest of him is rooted deep in the earth, solid and unmovable.”

I mean how awesome is that? I love how Masters doesn’t necessary tell you about the man himself to describe him. He talks about the stuff surrounding him (his tie, the earth). I thought that was really clever.

But you wanna know the moment I turned on the script? It’s when the crazy character came up to Lewis babbling about “the frequencies,” then he steps backwards and gets RAMMED INTO and killed by a car. I’ve seen that type of scene so many times in these movies/shows, that I lost confidence in the script right there. When I see moments that have been used so many times before in a genre, it’s almost always an indication that the writer didn’t work hard enough to differentiate his script from the pack. If we get that scene we’ve already seen before, we’re bound to see plenty of other scenes we’ve already seen before as well.

Line of Sight had the feeling of a dying campfire, with everyone desperately rushing around to throw twigs and newspaper onto it in the hopes of keeping it going. But everyone knows it’s a only a matter of time before it dies out. It’s not badly written. It has some nice moments. But it packs way too many questions into its 62 page flickering flame. Space out those questions in future episodes, and maybe we can keep this fire going.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Start a scene out on something other than your characters. This is more of a directing move, but you can use it in your script as well. Remember, just cause you have 2 (or 3, or 4) characters in a scene, it doesn’t mean you have to start on them. Find something else in the room, something relevant to the scene or interesting, and start on that instead. Masters does this early on, in the previously mentioned “Lewis looks in his wife’s purse” scene. Instead of starting on Lewis and his wife, Masters starts on the purse, and we only HEAR Lewis and his wife talk in voice over.  Eventually, Lewis’s hands enter the screen and start looking through the purse.  It’s a slightly more interesting way to write the scene that gives it a visual edge over the straightforward “master shot” we usually envision when we come into a room.